EXPENSIVE GAS MAKES GOOD FUEL FOR POLITICS

Experts cite several factors for high prices, but Obama takes blame in many quarters

Even before he was president, Barack Obama was blamed for high gas prices.

In 2008, the announcer in a John McCain ad asked, “Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?” As a photograph of Obama flashed onto the screen, a crowd chanted, “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!”

Now Obama is running again, prices are spiking again, and again he’s being criticized — from Valley Center to the GOP campaign trail.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says Obama was partially to blame for the rising prices because he slowed down licensing and permitting processes for offshore and onshore drilling.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was more direct: “Look, if you want 9-dollar-a-gallon gasoline and bowing to Saudi kings, vote for Obama. If you like $2.50 or less and be independent, vote for Newt Gingrich.”

Experts have cited more significant causes such as inflation, speculative investors, escalating political tensions in the Middle East and the growing oil demand of developing nations such as India and China.

But statements by Obama and his Cabinet have sparked debate on the gasoline issue.

For example, Steven Chu, now the nation’s energy secretary, said in 2008 that “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

“Obama’s energy sec flat out stated that Obama wants gas prices to increase so we won’t depend on oil and buy electrical cars!” John Trujillo wrote on Facebook. “What an incompetent idiot you liberals voted for, millions unemployed and underemployed can’t put food on table much less buy an electrical vehicle! Can’t wait till NOV!”

It may not help that some of the president’s supporters agree that upward gas prices are a societal good.

Hugh Moore, treasurer for the Green Party of San Diego County, said he hates that people have to pay more for gas because oil companies are raking in more profits, “but the truth is we should be paying considerably more for every gallon of gas.”

Last week, Obama stressed there was no silver bullet to reducing gas prices, rebuffing attacks on his prior statements suggesting that prices should increase and dismissing what he characterized as “phony” solutions to energy challenges.

“As a country that has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves but uses 20 percent of the world’s oil, we’re not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem,” Obama told workers at a truck plant Wednesday in North Carolina.

Obama’s attempts to offer an “all-of-the-above” response of more domestic oil production, expansion of alternative energy sources and sterner fuel-efficiency standards have done little to appease people eager to assign responsibility for the hot-button political issue.

Sarah Bond and her husband bought their home in Valley Center, about one hour from downtown San Diego, so their two young children could grow up close enough to nature yet not too far from their favorite destinations. But with gas prices soaring, they just don’t get out as much.

“It’s no more going to the beach, no more taking drives to the mountains. It’s school and groceries and what we could do at home,” Bond said. “We might as well live in Oklahoma for what it’s costing us.”

Bond, co-founder of the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition, said she’s frustrated with lawmakers and the president for not making energy more accessible, “not exploiting our natural resources in the clean, environmentally sound way that only Americans can do,” she said.

On Thursday, Democrats in the Senate rejected a Republican-backed effort to press ahead with the Keystone XL pipeline, a $7 billion project to bring oil from Canada to U.S. hubs. The project has been put on hold while the Obama administration studies it.

Maggie Hunt Acerra of Santee, an organizer of the San Diego County Tea Party Forum, said she believes gas prices are being artificially inflated due to the president’s green-energy policies.

“I believe he is pandering to his interest groups — the people that have invested a lot of money in this green technology — and his ideology just pushes him toward this,” Acerra said. “No one would do the things he does if they really had an understanding of what working and middle-class Americans are going through.”

According to exit polls, gas prices and the economy were the top issues on the minds of voters on Super Tuesday.

“Gas has gone up 20 cents in one week here in San Diego. Avg. $4.37 a gallon. Wow,” read a message on the Facebook page of “The Roger Hedgecock Show.”

Voters’ pain at the pump threatens to derail the delicate momentum for the Obama administration stemming from a third consecutive solid jobs report.

“Gasoline is not as big a portion of your bill as many other things, but it’s the one that hits you in the face,” said Sam Popkin, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego. “You may spend more money on butter and beer, but you don’t notice it the same way.”